INDIAN COMPUTING OLYMPIAD

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Announcements

  • Indian teams for IOI-2025 and EGOI-2025 announced  ...

  • Indian wins two medals at APIO-2025  ...

  • India AI Olympiad (INAIO) organized by ACM India, leading to IOAI  ...

About the Indian Computing Olympiad

The Indian Computing Olympiad is a nationwide competition organized annually by IARCS. The goal of the competition is to identify school students with outstanding skills in algorithms and computer programming.

The Indian Computing Olympiad is used to select the team of four students to represent India at the International Olympiad for Informatics (IOI). IOI is one of the twelve international Science Olympiads held annually. Other prominent Science Olympiads include Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Astronomy.

Eligibility

The Indian Computing Olympiad is open to all school students across the country, from any school board. Any student registered in school upto class 12 during the academic year 2024-2025 is eligible to take part in ICO during 2024-2025. There is no lower age limit for participation.

To participate, you must still be in school. If you have completed Class 12, you are no longer eligible, even if you have taken a break and are not enrolled in college, or if you are planning to redo your Class 12 exams for improvement.

Registration

Registration for ICO-2025 is closed. Registration for ICO-2026 will open in October, 2025. More details will be announced towards the end of September, 2025.

Stages

The first round of the Indian Computing Olympiad is in two parts.

  • The Zonal Informatics Olympiad (ZIO) is a written exam held at centres across the country. ZIO-2025 will take place on 14 December, 2024.

  • The Zonal Computing Olympiad (ZCO) is a programming exam held at centres across the country. The programming languages supported are C++, Java and Python. ZCO-2025 was held on 1 December, 2024.

  • Students can write either ZIO or ZCO or both and qualify through either exam for the second round.

The second round, the Indian National Olympiad in Informatics (INOI) involves programming. The only programming language allowed for INOI is C++. INOI-2025 was held on Sunday, 9 February, 2025.

Approximately 30 students are selected from INOI for the IOI Training Camp (IOITC). IOITC-2025 will take place during the period 8–14 June, 2025.

IOI-2025 will be hosted by Bolivia.

How to prepare for ICO

  • The syllabus for ZIO and ZCO is the list of Basic Topics in the Online Study Material  ...

  • The syllabus for INOI and IOITC is the IOI syllabus, given here  ...

  • Go through the Online Study Material for ICO  ...

  • Mentoring programme for ZCO, INOI and IOITC by past IOITC participants  ...

  • Preparatory material for ICO on CodeChef  ...

  • Solve practice problems and past ZCO / INOI online at the IARCS Problems Archive  ...

  • Solve more recent ZCO / INOI problems on CodeDrills  ...

  • Commonlounge community archives  ...

Incentives for students

The following academic institutions in India have special admission procedures for ICO students. Please check directly with each institution about the eligibility criteria and procedure for applying.

  • Chennai Mathematical Institute offers direct admission to students who win gold/silver medals at INOI or are selected for IOITC in Class 11 or 12  ...

  • IIIT Delhi offers bonus points to students selected for INOI and IOITC  ...

  • IIIT Hyderabad offers admission via the Olympiad category to students selected for IOITC  ...

  • IIT Gandhinagar offers admission via the Olympiad category to students selected for IOITC  ...

  • IIT Kanpur offers admission via the Olympiad category to students selected for IOITC  ...

  • IIT Madras offers admission via the Olympiad category to students selected for IOITC  ...

The following international academic institutions have special admission procedures for IOI students. Please check directly with each institution about the eligibility criteria and procedure for applying.

  • The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has a scholarship scheme for selected IOI and APIO medallists  ...

  • Nanyang Technical University (NTU), Singapore offers special consideration for IOI medallists  ...

  • National University of Singapore (NUS) offers special consideration for IOI medallists and INOI gold medallists  ...

Contact

Please write to Madhavan Mukund, National Coordinator, Indian Computing Olympiad at ico@iarcs.org.in if you have any questions or clarifications.

Our partners

The Indian Computing Olympiad is held in partnership with:

From 2001-2002 to 2013-2014, ZIO and INOI were coordinated through the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE). ZCO-2016, INOI-2016 and ZCO-2017 were held on the TCS iON platform. INOI-2017 to INOI-2023 and ZCO-2018 to ZCO-2023 were held on the CodeChef platform. Jed-i provided administrative support from 2013 to 2015.




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